


the sea doesn't like to be restrained

by evotter



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/M, PERCABETH PROPOSAL FIC!!!, also a huge dork, bc what else ?, i tried to make it more authentic that way, listen, percabeth, percy and annabeth adore their friends, percy has no self control what a dork, percy is a MOMMAS BOY THROUGH AND THROUGH, percy pov, proposal, references SO MANY past events from so many books, some of the characters that are tagged are mentioned but don't make appearances, the gods love meddling, who knows - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 13:46:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12170091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evotter/pseuds/evotter
Summary: Looking back on it, I think almost everyone at Camp Half-Blood knew that I was going to propose to my girlfriend before I knew it myself.





	the sea doesn't like to be restrained

**Author's Note:**

> FINALLY a finished piece to kick myself back into the PJO fandom. ummmm, i posted the first part of this on tumblr and it got way more notes than i thought it would ? i considered uploading this part by part, but then i decided to just add the whole thing in one swift post
> 
> there are some things that might be considered OOC, but give me a breakkkkk. i love how this turned out which is seriously saying something for myself lol
> 
> listen. the new rome idea was so cute and all, but i just can’t imagine percy and annabeth spending their lives in the roman camp? they have to be in new york. i won’t have it any other way.
> 
> even at twenty years old percy jackson is still a sappy dork who is hopelessly in love with his girlfriend and i love him very much
> 
> (edit: would they actually do this for their friends? bro, idk. there are SO MANY percabeth proposal fics out there that i really REALLY tried to make mine more original? [read: the god shenanigans] but percy and annabeth love their friends [percy's fatal flaw, anyone?] a lot a lot. BUT anyway, the more notes this fic gets on my tumblr the more paranoid i get about people not liking my work lol)

* * *

 

Looking back on it, I think almost everyone at Camp Half-Blood knew that I was going to propose to my girlfriend before I knew it myself.

I mean, it was something I’d been thinking about in the back of my mind since I’d seen New Rome—I hadn’t even been with Annabeth for a whole year and I was already thinking about our future. But we’d known each other since we were twelve. She was my best friend, right next to Grover. And even though we’d only been dating since we were sixteen, I had a feeling I was already in love with her way before then.

And then there were the pesky eight months Hera had stolen. A necessary sacrifice, I see that now—but I still don’t think I’ll ever be okay with it. I mean, sure, if it hadn’t happened none of us would be alive right now, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t still pissed off at the Queen of the gods.

Annabeth was, too. But she’d always hated Hera. Stealing me for half a year probably just added a lot of fuel to that fire.

But we made up for those missing months. New Rome had been our plan, but when we graduated high school we both decided to stay in Manhattan. I mean, my mom had just given birth to my new baby sister and Camp Half-Blood had the largest amount of campers I’d ever seen—almost enough that we could fairly rival Camp Jupiter. Not that I wanted to test those odds.

It was fun, I’ll admit. Pretending to be normal college students was quite possibly one of the most entertaining times of my life. Of course, I had Annabeth by my side the whole time, so I felt like anything was possible. We stayed on campus freshman year. By the time sophomore year rolled around, I had my own apartment.

(Being the son of Poseidon and all has its perks. An internship at the aquarium soon turned into a full-on part-time job. My mom cried when she found out I got a job, but she swears it was just post-birth hormones.)

A shabby, tiny apartment that felt like home the minute I stepped inside. I had a little money saved up, too—not to mention the fact that Camp Half-Blood had a scholarship fund for college demigods. Like, _hey! Congrats on not being dead! Here’s some money. Now go die under the stress of college._

But sooner rather than later I had blue furniture and a (surprisingly) neat bedroom and Annabeth swore to all the gods that it smelled like the ocean. Maybe that was a gift from Poseidon. Maybe she was just imagining it. But either way, it was my home, and by winter break, it was also Annabeth’s.

Living with a girl is nothing like you could ever imagine.  Living with your _girlfriend_ is even scarier, especially when she’s Annabeth Chase. But it’s also awesome. That year was the first year that Annabeth truly accepted the blue food gag that had been running between me and my mom for years. Paul was in on it. Even Estelle, my baby sister, was starting to get ripped-up blue pancakes for breakfast. But it was a family tradition, and Annabeth would always be family. And we were both going to be 21 by the end of summer, and I...well, I wanted her to be more than my girlfriend.

I know what you’re probably thinking. I know that proposing at 20 is probably too young in your eyes. You probably think I’m nuts.

But here’s the thing. Demigods don’t live very long. I’ve lost way too many friends in the past eight years to believe otherwise. I’ve almost died more times than I’d like to admit. And I knew I was ready for anything—as long as Annabeth was with me.

You know, I hadn’t planned on proposing on the day I actually did. No way. I had a whole plan—I’d even talked to Chiron about it. I’d gotten all of my friends willing to help. It was supposed to happen later that week.

But Annabeth had showed up on the porch of Cabin Three in jean shorts and a soft blue tee ( _that used to be mine_ ) and my heart did its usual relay race. Her camp necklace had so many beads on it that she had lengthened the cord just for all of them to fit; her dad’s college ring hung off to the side, and right in the middle was the coral pendant I’d given to her almost five full years ago, when we’d started dating.

So she looked like she normally did. But to me, she was still as beautiful as ever.

“Grover and Juniper are waiting for us down by the beach.” Annabeth said. Her hair was tucked into a plain blue baseball cap.

“They are?” I asked, frowning at her. “For what?”

Her gray eyes sparkled. “Just come _on_ , Seaweed Brain. You’ll see.”

I followed her out of my cabin and down to the beach. Waiting in the sand was my best friend, Grover, a satyr, and his dryad girlfriend, Juniper. The two of them had been dating longer than me and Annabeth.

I failed to notice the bag at Grover’s feet— _hooves_ —until we reached them. “What’s going on?” I asked, and instead of responding, Juniper just squealed and clutched Grover’s hand tighter.

“We’re going on vacation.” Grover announced.

“What?” I asked. I glanced at Juniper. “Can you do that?”

Juniper’s cheeks were a darker shade of green. “Not normally,” she said. She bent down and picked up a potted plant beside her. “But Grover was able to use some ‘Lord of the Wild’ power to put some of my tree in here. So I can go.”

“We can’t stay away very long, in any case.” Grover said. He was grinning ear-to-ear. “So we’ll be back next week. Don’t do anything while we’re gone,” he added, but he was looking right at me.

I blushed. I knew exactly what he meant.

“Well, have fun.” Annabeth reached forward to hug Juniper and Grover. I did, too, and when I got to my furry best friend, he said, “I _mean_ it, Percy.”

“You make it sound like I have no self-control.” I replied. I clapped his shoulder and then let go. “Have fun, you two. Make good choices.”

My suggestive look went right over Grover’s head and straight to Juniper, who blushed even darker. “We’ll Iris-Message when we can,” she said. Grover picked up the bag and Juniper tightened her grip on her plant. Hand-in-hand, they turned and walked right into the forest.

“What was the point of meeting on the beach if they were just going to head back up to camp, anyway?” I asked.

Annabeth shrugged. “Who knows with them?”

My best friend and his girlfriend disappeared between the trees. “I’m really happy for him,” I said. “For them.”

“Me, too.” Annabeth turned her head and looked out at the waves. “So...we’re here.”

“We are,” I agreed.

“Do you want to swim?”

I looked down at myself and then at her. “Neither of us is wearing a swimsuit.”

“Neither of us _needs_ a swimsuit, Seaweed Brain,” said Annabeth pointedly. At my blank stare, she added, “You’re the son of Poseidon. You can dry us off instantly.”

Oh. _Oh._ Right. I felt my cheeks heat up in embarrassment. That was not what I thought she was talking about.

Annabeth seemed to catch on. Her gray eyes widened. “Did you—?”

“Swimming sounds great!” I interrupted, maybe a little too loudly. I felt too embarrassed, like the gods were watching us, but stopping Annabeth from saying it out loud meant nothing. Then again, if Athena wanted to kill me for doing...er, unholy things to her daughter, I would have been dead long before now.

Annabeth’s cheeks were bright pink as I followed her into the water. I couldn’t help remembering; this was where our friends threw us right after they’d caught us kissing on my sixteenth birthday. I had a lot of memories when it came to that birthday. It was the best birthday of all time. Our anniversary. The day Olympus was saved. _The best underwater kiss of all time_.

I grabbed Annabeth’s hand just before we both went under. She looked around, able to breathe as easily as I could, and then gave me a smile. Gods of Olympus, she was beautiful. She’d always been. She would always be. Her eyes sparkled like they did in the sun, even underwater, and suddenly the pocket of my shorts felt a little heavier.

My girlfriend turned to watch a couple of hippocampi race through the water. I took the opportunity to shove my free hand in my pocket. There was Riptide, my magical pen that turned into a sword, and…

No way. I’d left that with my mom.

Next to Riptide, barely fitting in the small pocket, was the little box with the engagement ring I’d had for at least a month.

I _definitely_ remembered leaving it with my mom and Paul the last time we’d visited, because I knew how easily I could lose things and I knew this was the one thing I couldn’t afford to misplace. I even remembered Iris-Messaging my mom last night to make sure she still had it.

So why was it in my pocket?

“Look,” said Annabeth, pointing at the hippocampi. They’d noticed her attention and had started playing with one another in the water. I watched, and—and I almost saw one wink at me.

So maybe it was my dad. Or Aphrodite. Or, gods above, maybe it was even Athena. Or all three. But someone—some _god_ —had placed the ring in my pocket for a reason.

Oh, gods. Grover was going to kill me.

I let go of Annabeth’s hand, but focused my energy into keeping her dry and breathing. She turned to me, away from the swimming hippocampi and towards me, confusion pinching her eyebrows together. She seemed fine, though, able to breathe and everything.

This was it, wasn’t it? The hippocampi had stopped their playing and they were just there, waiting in the water. Even the rest of the sea life seemed to still, waiting, like they were all watching what was about to happen.

“Wise Girl,” I said. The red coral on her necklace seemed to glow a little brighter. “Almost five years ago today, I kissed you right here.”

“I remember.” Annabeth said. She was smiling.

“And then we would come down here and I’d make an air bubble.” I continued. “And we’d bring blue cupcakes and we’d watch the hippocampi. And we’d do that every summer.”

She seemed to love the memory as much as I did.

“And then we went to college together. After _literally_ going to hell and back. And you moved in with me. And you cleaned up after me—which is not easy.” I admitted.

Annabeth laughed. “Your mom offered to give me anything I wanted just for doing it,” she recalled. “I think she loves me more than she loves you.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I said. My heart was beginning to pound in my chest. If she knew what was about to happen, she showed no sign of it—or maybe she did. Her eyes were shining as usual. Her hands were clasped around the red coral piece on her necklace. Her expression reminded me of the day I turned immortality down on Olympus.

“I’ve never said this out loud,” I started, “but it’s the truth. When Zeus offered to make me a god, I...I really wanted to. Part of me wanted that. Immortality. The chance to be just like my father. But then I remembered how I felt when I’d found that brochure for the Hunters of Artemis in your backpack. And I realized that an eternal life couldn’t have been enough for me. Not if you weren’t in it. Making sure the gods were rightfully claiming their children to prevent another Titan uprising was the right thing to do—but that wasn’t the main reason why I turned down immortality. The main reason was _you_.”

Now or never. I could almost imagine Grover’s expression. I could imagine him bleating angrily at me and chewing on an empty soda can. I could imagine all of my friends probably not speaking to me for at least three days. But I didn’t care. _This_ was the right moment, and I was sure of it.

I pulled the small box from my shorts and I popped it open. I’d taken Rachel and Thalia with me to make sure that the ring would scream Annabeth—but I’d seen it and I’d _known_ it was hers before Rachel or Thalia could even give their approval. Something extremely simple, but intricate enough to be worthy of the greatest demigod of our age. Of the demigod I was completely in love with.

Annabeth covered her mouth.

“So, Wise Girl,” I said, and I tried for a smile, except I could feel my mouth (and my entire body) shaking as her eyes zeroed in on it. “Will you marry me?”

 

We emerged from the lake, completely dry. The beach was as calm as it usually was. I could see Grover’s hoofprints still in the sand. If I listened hard enough, I could hear the clashing of swords coming from the arena.

The ring box felt even heavier in my pocket, which made no sense, because it was lighter than it had been before I’d pulled it out of my pocket. The hippocampi had done flips under the water when I’d slid the ring into Annabeth’s finger. So did my stomach.

“Everyone’s going to kill me,” I said.

Annabeth frowned at me—or at least attempted to. Truth was, she hadn’t been able to stop smiling. It was a pretty amusing sight. “Why?”

“Well, I had this whole thing planned.” I shoved my free hand into my pocket. The other was clasped tightly around her hand, and if I moved my thumb, I could mess with the engagement ring resting on her finger. “Everyone was in on it. It wasn’t supposed to happen until next week.”

“Is that why Grover told you not to do anything while they were gone?” Annabeth asked. I looked over at her, shocked. She only shrugged. “Grover is a terrible whisperer. I didn’t suspect. I was just curious.”

I kissed her head and sighed. “Well, yeah. That’s why. Frank and Hazel were even going to ride Arion to get here. Thalia was going to be here, too.”

“Oh.” her eyes were wide. “So you mean _everyone_.”

I nodded. “All of our friends. So...they’re all going to kill me when they find out that I proposed early and none of them were there to see it.”

Annabeth let go of my hand and wrapped her arm around my waist. I rested my arm on her shoulders and she leaned closer to me as we headed up the beach and back toward camp. “They’ll have to go through me first,” she said. I couldn’t see her expression over the baseball cap covering her face, but I was pretty sure she was smiling.

  


Annabeth and I sat shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the hearth in the middle of the cabins. Normally, Hestia was sitting here, tending to it, acting as invisible as she usually was, but I hadn’t seen her at all today. The sun was beginning to set, which meant dinner would be starting soon, and then the campfire, but I wasn’t sure if we would be going. No one knew yet. Just me and Annabeth, in our own little bubble. Wise Girl and Seaweed Brain.

“What made you change your mind?” Annabeth asked quietly.

“Hmm?”

“You said you weren’t going to propose for another week.” Annabeth recalled. She poked my shorts pocket, where the empty ring box was still residing. “Were you just carrying that around with you on a whim?”

“I—ah—no.” I said. Her eyebrows shot up. She’d ditched the hat as it started to get darker, and had undone the braids her hair was in, making it curlier than ever. I brushed the loose strands of hair away from her face. “It was actually with my mom and Paul.”

“Then…?” Annabeth trailed off, searching for an answer.

“I don’t know.” I said, and I meant it. But I told her about what I’d seen the hippocampus do, and who I thought could have helped me out today.

“I’d definitely rule out Athena.” Annabeth said. She had a light flush on her cheeks that seemed like she knew more than she was letting on, but I didn’t ask. “Aphrodite _said_ she’d make my love life interesting, but...I have a feeling she stopped meddling after we started college. Maybe she decided we were too old for that. And she’d give us a break.”

“So we think it was my dad?” I asked.

Annabeth hummed and looped her arm around my back. “Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe it _was_ Aphrodite. Either way, I have a feeling we’ll never know.”

“Probably not.” I said. I kissed her head. “But I’ll sacrifice a little more food to all three of them tonight, just in case.”

“I thought we ruled out my mom.”

“Oh, we did,” I agreed. I glanced at the Athena cabin. The owl on the top seemed to be staring me down more than it usually did. “But I’m sure your mom knows by now. And she hasn’t killed me. So...I’m going to thank her.”

Annabeth laughed loudly at that. She reached up to kiss me, and I felt like I could have stayed in that moment with her forever.

 

But, of course, my luck ran out quickly. We’d only stayed at the hearth for a few minutes longer, because we had to stop at my cabin before dinner. I threw a hoodie on over my shirt and I set the empty ring box on my bedside table.

“We should probably call your mom.” Annabeth mused, leaning against the wall as she watched me throw a sweatshirt on. “So she doesn’t go looking for the ring and freak out.”

“She might try to drive here just to let me know.” I agreed. “Can I borrow your phone?”

I was almost twenty-one and I still didn’t have a cell phone. Not that I minded, most days. Having a phone on me increased my chances of getting killed. And I was engaged. The less chances I had to get killed, the better.

I wasn’t surprised to see that Annabeth had my mom on speed dial. My girlfriend—no, my _fianc_ _ée_ —opened the drawer I had just shut as the phone started to ring.

My mom picked up. “Percy?”

“Hi, Mom.” I said.

“Hi, baby. Is everything okay?” she asked. In the background, I heard my sister squeal my name. I couldn’t believe how old she was already.

“Of course. I just wanted to warn you—if you try to look for the ring, it probably won’t be there.”

“It won’t?” My mom asked warily. I heard rustling on the other end, and then a noise of confusion. “Did you break in to take it?”

“No.” I said, and was unable to keep the laugh out of my voice. “I think a god did.”

Sally Blofis deserved the Mom-of-the-Year award every year. She really did. I quickly explained to her exactly when I’d felt the ring in my pocket.

“I see.” she said. “And?”

“And,” I said, looking over to where Annabeth was pulling my AHS hoodie over her shirt. I probably wasn’t going to get it back. “She said yes.”

Annabeth smiles at me warmly. “Oh, _Percy_ ,” said my mom breathlessly. “Congratulations. I knew she’d say yes. Oh, I’m so happy. Ellie,” she added, away from the phone. “Your big brother’s getting married! You’re going to have a big sister!”

“In there?” Estelle asked, in her sweet three-year-old voice, and I knew immediately where she was pointing.

“Oh—no,” said my mom, as I pulled the phone away from my ear to laugh loudly. “No, see, marriage is—Percy, I’m going to have to call you back.”

“Of course.” I said between laughs. “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, honey.” Mom said. She paused and then said, “Tell Annabeth I love her too.”

“I will.” I promised. My mom hung up, and I repeated her message to Annabeth as I handed her phone back.

“I love your mom.” Annabeth replied. “I’m going to text her that.”

“You _text_ my mom?”

Annabeth looked up. I recognized the look as teasingly annoyed. “She’s also _my_ mom. Of course I text her.”

I couldn’t argue with that. “Well,” I said. “We might as well get over to the Mess Hall for dinner. Hey, when we’re married, can we sit at the same table or do you still have to sit with your siblings?”

I’d never seen a married demigod couple before. I mean, I did in New Rome—but not a Greek demigod couple. New Rome had been a good idea for us, but...it wasn’t home. It had been, briefly, and I had the tattoo to remind me, but Camp Half-Blood was my real home. Manhattan was my city. My mom and stepdad and sister were here. Most of my friends were here. I couldn’t see myself moving across the country. And I don’t think Annabeth could see herself doing that, either.

“We’ll ask Chiron.” Annabeth said. She smiled. “Maybe that’s how we’ll tell the camp.”

“Right.” I said. “And then Will Solace tells Nico. Nico tells Hazel. Hazel tells Frank. Hazel also tells Leo. Leo tells Piper. Piper tells Jason. Jason tells—”

Annabeth covered my mouth with her hand. “I get it.” she said. She pulled her hand away before I could lick it and make her mad. “But everyone’s going to find out eventually, Seaweed Brain. Unless you’d rather keep it a secret.”

I stared at her. “Are you crazy?” I felt like shouting it. I felt like telling random strangers. _Annabeth Chase is my fianc_ _ée! I’m marrying Annabeth Chase!_ “I’d never keep it a secret, Wise Girl. Even if it meant my inevitable death.”

“I love you, Seaweed Brain.” Annabeth mused. She smiled at me as we left my cabin. Gods. Four years of hearing her say it and I never got tired of it.

“I love you too, Wise Girl.” I said. I kissed her on the porch of my cabin. And then, hand in hand, we headed off to the Mess Hall.

  


Will Solace was the first person to notice.

The minute Annabeth and I walked into the Mess Hall, the senior counselor of Apollo cabin made a beeline for us. He stared at my face, then at Annabeth’s, and then at the pockets of the sweatshirt she was wearing, where her hands were currently buried.

“Oh, you are _so_ dead,” he said.

I tried to make my face blank. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“They’re all going to kill you.” Will barrelled on, completely ignoring my lie. “The _minute_ they find out, you’re dead meat. ‘Percy Jackson, aged twenty, died from proposing to his girlfriend without any of his friends present.’”

“C’mon, man.” I whined. Annabeth only laughed. “Give me a break. I couldn’t wait any longer.”

“You’re going to have to come up with a better excuse than that.” he warned. Then, his expression faded, and he grinned at both of us, pulling us both into one big bear hug. “Congratulations, you two. I mean—I knew it was coming, but still.”

“Thanks, Will,” said Annabeth, her voice muffled by the son of Apollo’s shirt. “It means a lot to us.”

“Just keep it a secret until the others arrive, okay?” I asked. “I want to be prepared when my friends try to wring my neck.”

Will looked hesitant, but he nodded. He squeezed both of our shoulders and then headed back to his table.

Thankfully, in the loud chatter of the Mess Hall, nobody had noticed what had just happened. But Chiron and Mr. D were watching us from their table, and I hated to think what that meant. “I’ll see you after dinner.” Annabeth said in my ear. She kissed my cheek and then went to Athena’s table.

I sat at the Poseidon cabin table by myself. I loaded food onto my plate and then stood back up, making my way to the fireplace with a knife.

I took a deep breath. “For the gods,” I said, putting nearly half of my plate into the fire. I turned the plate around and pushed the rest of the food into the fire as well. “And for...whoever you are,” I said. _Poseidon. Aphrodite. Athena_. “Thank you.”

The fire smelled like fresh baked brownies and sunshine. Maybe a little bit like the ocean, too, if I concentrated hard enough. But other campers were waiting to sacrifice their own food to the gods, so I left the fireplace behind and sat back at my table.

 

I found Annabeth quickly after the campers dispersed from the Mess Hall. We followed the crowd down to the amphitheatre, where the fire was already roaring, and took our seats on one of the logs. Normally, we wouldn’t sit together—Annabeth would sit with her siblings and I would sit by myself—but tonight was different. The heat from the fire made Annabeth pull her sleeves up to her elbows. The ring I’d given her hours before glinted in the firelight. I could already hear the whispers of the campers sitting around the fire, but I didn’t care. None of that mattered. Not tonight, anyway.

It would matter in the morning, probably, when news had spread across the entire camp, meaning some of my friends were probably starting to hear it, too.

After the campfire, Annabeth stopped right outside Cabin Six. I remembered another time I’d kissed her goodnight—the last night before the second Great Prophecy. It felt like eons ago.

“Long day,” I said conversationally.

Annabeth snorted. She looped her arms around my waist and looked up to meet my eyes. “That’s an understatement.”

My hand came up to thread through her hair. The heat and humidity of summer made it even more curly, and I loved it. And I loved her.

So I told her.

Annabeth hummed in response. Her eyelids were drooping. “I love you too, Seaweed Brain.”

I kissed her head and we said goodnight. I watched her walk into her cabin and flash me a quick, tired smile before closing the silver doors behind her. With my hands in my pockets, I turned around and walked to Cabin Three.

Sitting on my bedside table was the empty ring box. I looked at it and collapsed on my bottom bunk almost right away. If I thought about it too long, I could feel myself start to panic at the thought of _marriage._ We hadn’t talked about when; would it be a few years? Was she ready? Was _I_ ready? All I knew was Annabeth. Since the moment Hera had taken my memories and the only name I could remember was Annabeth’s, I knew she was the person I was going to marry. And I was hoping we could be unlike other demigods and actually live a long, happy life together.

I tried not to linger too hard on the name _Annabeth Jackson_ , and how it sounded like it was meant to be all along. But it was the last thing on my mind when I finally fell asleep.

  


“You _still_ drool in your sleep.”

Annabeth’s face swam into my view as I pried my eyes open. The cabin was alight with the rays of sun peeking through the folds of the curtains. Annabeth’s blond hair was curled around her face and messy. Her stormy gray eyes shone with amusement.

“You say that like you’re surprised.” I said, sitting up as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. “You’ve known that I drool in my sleep from day one, Wise Girl. It’s not like this is the first time it’s happened.”

“No, no,” responded Annabeth. She took a seat at the foot of my bed. “It’s nice to see that some things haven’t changed. Even if they are gross.”

“Yeah, well,” I retorted, unable to keep the grin from forming as I said it. “You agreed to marry me anyway.”

“Yeah.” Annabeth said, and she grinned just as wide. “I did.”

“PERCY JACKSON!”

The smiles from our faces disappeared. The door to my cabin flew open. Standing in the doorway was a very, _very_ angry daughter of Zeus.

“Thalia.” I greeted. Her electric blue eyes found mine and she glared at me. “Hey.”

“Nico told me something very interesting.” she said, gripping her Hunter’s bow. As she stepped into the cabin, she was followed by two other people—her brother, Jason, and Piper McLean. Both of them had windswept hair and ruffled clothes. I could only assume that they’d flown to Camp Half-Blood.

“Ah.” I said. I looked at Annabeth. “I was wrong, then. Will told Nico but Nico didn’t tell Hazel. He told Thalia.”

“Oh, Nico told Hazel.” Piper said. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Nico told all of us.”

Sometimes it really annoyed me how close Nico was to literally all of my friends. Of course, I’m sure he was probably mad that I’d threw the plan out the window.

I opened my mouth to say something, but was interrupted by the whinnying of a horse. Then, Arion said some words in my mind that were _not_ appropriate.

“Is your horse mad at me too, Hazel?” I demanded as the short, curly-haired demigod stormed into my cabin, followed by Frank.

“Yes.” Hazel said confidently. One of these days, I was really going to wash that horse’s mouth out with soap.

“C’mon, man.” Frank said, frowning at me. He looked the least angry—but then again, I don’t think I’d ever seen Frank with an _actual_ angry expression. “One week! That’s all it was going to be! Could you really not wait?”

I looked at Annabeth, who was biting her lip. It took me a minute to realize she was trying very hard not to laugh. “No,” I said. She met my eyes and smiled. “I definitely couldn’t.”

“You are so rude.” Thalia declared. All of my friends nodded in agreement. “We’ve been planning this for at least a month, Kelp Head.”

“I’m aware, Pinecone Face.” I retorted. She scowled. “I was the one who came to you guys in the first place.”

“A _month_?” Annabeth repeated.

“It was a very well-thought-out plan.” Piper told her. “And we were all really looking forward to it.”

I had the decency to look sheepish. “I didn’t mean to do it,” I protested. “I didn’t even have the ring with me. It didn’t seem like a special day. But she knocked on my cabin door and she was wearing a shirt of mine that she _definitely_ stole and we said goodbye to Grover and Juniper on the beach and…” I looked over at Annabeth. For quite possibly the hundredth time, I realized I was hopelessly in love with her. “And we went for a swim. Right where we’d kissed on my sixteenth birthday. And a god put the ring in my pocket. And I knew.”

Annabeth punched me gently in the arm. “Seaweed Brain,” she muttered, just soft enough for me to hear but no one else. She was smiling.

“Hold on.” Thalia said. Her angry expression had faded, thank the gods. But I couldn’t recognize the look she was giving me now. “You said a _god_ put the ring in your pocket?”

I nodded. “The ring was at my mom’s. But when we waded into the lake, it appeared in my pocket.”

“Aphrodite?” Piper guessed.

“I thought so too,” I said. “But one of the hippocampi winked at me when I pulled the ring out of my pocket.”

“So Poseidon.” she said. “Or both.”

Thinking about my dad and his godly relatives watching my and Annabeth’s relationship kind of weirded me out. “Probably.”

“Well, we’re still mad,” said Hazel. My friends nodded in agreement. Then Hazel’s eyes softened, and she said, “But we’re really happy for you guys. We’ve all just been through so much together, you know? Not that you two getting engaged is a whole group thing, but we would have loved to be there.”

Annabeth watched me carefully. I met her eyes, and suddenly we both knew.

“Percy,” she said, letting go of my hand. “I don’t want to get married.”

“Annabeth?” Thalia frowned. Most of our friends had similar expressions.

“We didn’t mean—” Hazel started.

Annabeth had already taken the ring off her finger. She placed it in my open palm and I put it right back into the little box, which I immediately put into my pocket. I wasn’t going to lose it. “Ask me in a week,” she said.

“You’re the best girlfriend I’ve ever had.” I told her. “And the best fiancée.”

She grinned. “I know.”

“You two are the best.” Thalia said. As one of our oldest friends, it meant a lot coming from her. She pulled us both into a tight hug.

“We love you, Thals,” said Annabeth, hugging her friend tightly.

“Yeah, yeah,” replied Thalia, but she let go of us with a bright smile.

I faced the rest of our friends. “So?” I said. “Come on, guys. We don’t have all day. We have less than a week to pull off the best proposal ever.”

Jason clapped me on the shoulder. I turned to look at Annabeth and I winked. She and I both knew what the real best proposal was—in the lake where we’d kissed for the second time, in the camp where we’d met for the first time. Our little moment that just the two of us shared.

Less than a week later, the ring found its way back to Annabeth’s finger.

 


End file.
